B.V. Byra Reddy and J.S. Chandrashekar
Abstract
Human - sloth bear conflicts are occurring due to increase in the interference but the humans and also due to the shrinking of forest area. The causing the sloth bears to move from natural forests to the nearby agriculture lands in search of food and water. This causes increased human - sloth bear conflicts in many of the areas. The objective of this paper is to study the human-sloth bear conflicts in and around Gudekote Sloth Bear Sanctuary, Karnataka from 2019-20 to 2023-24 and also to collect opinion of villagers and victims related to crop damages and human attacks. The information such as the time of siting the sloth bears and periodicity, number of conflict cases, human attack was also collected. The data on sloth bear conflicts in terms of crop damages and human attacks were obtained from the Department of Forests, Government of Karnataka. The survey was carried out among the villagers and victims to record their opinion on crop damages and human attacks by the sloth bears in the study area. Also, some of the opinions were collected on the dependency the forests by the villagers, need for conservation of sloth bears, necessity of conservation and awareness programmes on conservation of sloth bears and their habitat, and conflicts mitigation measures to avoid the conflicts in the study area. There were 35 to 52 human-sloth bear conflicts from 2019- 20 to 2023-24 and differ from year to year and the highest of 52 conflicts were recorded due to increased nomadic shepherds during 2022-23. The Sanctuary is severely fragmented by agricultural lands and human settlements. This study reveals that Sloth Bear-Human conflicts in the form of crop loss which is more compared to human attacks. There were 7 to 53 crop damage cases were occurred in the sanctuary areas and among these, highest number of crop damage cases were recorded in the month of October and is due to growing of maize and other crops, which are likely food for the sloth bears. Most of the sloth bear attacks on human are highest in the agriculture land and less was at the sanctuary area, and those mostly occurred during the time of grazing, and in the adjacent areas of villages in the sanctuary. Sloth bears are not harmed any livestock in this region was significant. However, local people utilizing the forest area majorly for grazing and very few for firewood collection.